Remember me as I am
by Socks-Chan
Summary: Naruto's thoughts as he sits in that lonely hospital room after his fight with Sasuke. Explores the things that Naruto thinks about himself, and what sets him apart, and makes him keep after Sasuke, despite evident betrayal.


Naruto sat, only his strong hands above the covers, the light blue pajamas faded against his skin. There was nothing in his head. The cradle of his skull was a mass of empty sounds, and swirling non-emotions that whipped at the dome of his skull that seperated it from the air. The thin, over used blue blanket under his fingers is weak, and he thinks that it would be easy to rip it apart, until the threads bite into his fingers, and he can feel the burning pain along his synapses. He can almost feel the comfort he'd get from tearing the fabric, destroying this entire room, in a fit of rage, and helplessness. He can feel his fingers tingling at the thought, the possibility of motion that buzzes over his skin cells, but he doesn't move. He sits there, eyes unfocussed, expression blank, his body frustrated at the straining tension of movement unrealised. He doesn't mind being alone. It's not bad, but he really feels nothing about it. He can understand why, unlike Neji and the rest, he isn't surrounded by family. He doesn't begrudge the remainder of his team for not being there for him. Though he thinks they're being selfish, he has the empathy to realize that seeing him would hurt them. Naruto has no desire to heighten Kakashi's feeling of failure, nor Sakura's sadness. Naruto's only current wish is to sit, not moving and thinking of nothing.  
He felt himself giving up, his determination sinking back under his skin like a needle, hiding in the neuro-spinal fluid at the base of his back. There had always been that small flame, an ember burning at the center of his heart, and in his eyes, a doggedness that resided in his very blood, but even a casual glance could show you that that was gone now. Naruto was lost, and with no one there to help him, he sat, hands unmoving, becoming cold with lack of circulation.  
The fundamental difference between Naruto and everyone else was not a simple thing to pin down. It wasn't something he was born with, he didn't think. Something in Naruto believed that everyone was born the same, or at least conceived that way. In the warm embrace of a mother's body, no one knows the pain of heartbreak. But somehow along the way he'd gained something that his peers, and even elders seemed to lack. Naruto, had never believed in feeling sorry for himself, and so he couldn't know that that very trait helped seperate him. He knew how hard it was to smile, knew that the crease of muscle was almost impossible to keep on his face sometimes. And there were times like now, when he couldn't bear to smile, when he felt that smiling would break him apart. It hurt him to pretend all the time, and anyone close to him instinctively knows it, knows that one day, a little fox-faced boy got out of bed, and decided that he was tired of crying, and that it isn't fair that he had to learn it so young, and all by himself.  
Naruto sat still, the bandages on his body disecting his hair in violent yellow spikes that stood up from amid the white linen. The scars at his cheeks weren't creased in their usual smile, nor were his eyes even all the way open. The usual bright blue was shaded to an acid washed denim blue-grey, and his gaze rested on his hands, unmoving, as if he weren't conscious. It was strange. Sasuke leaving, beating him almost to death didn't inspire any feelings of betrayal, or thirst for vengeance, though anyone that knew him could tell you that hatred was not Naruto's way. Naruto knew that he hadn't fought with everything in him. It was Sasuke. How was he supposed to hit his best friend and try to kill him? There was no way for him to do that, and Sasuke, in his desperate, hateful frame of mind had easily overtaken him like a wave overtaking the shore.  
He hates himself as he thinks that, and he hates Sasuke, too, just a little, because Sasuke really had betrayed him, even if he wasn't angry, even if he wanted to jump up again and follow him. He hates Orochimaru too, and Itachi, with an acidic feeling that crawls through his veins like fire and claws in his gut, ripping organs, and destroying him, even though he doesn't scream, and he can't die. He's afraid that the next time he sees Sasuke, he won't recognize him, or that Orochimaru will have taken him away forever. He fears that his story will end the same way his master's did, because he had asked, the first time Jiraiya had visited, asked him if he'd ever gone after Orochimaru. Jiraiya had. Naruto was afraid that the small family he had made for himself would fall apart.  
But mostly, as he sat there, staring at his fingers wrapped in linen, he was afraid that he would never see Sasuke again. He was afraid that he had lost part of himself, because all he wanted, even now, even bruised and broken, was to go to Otougakure, and drag him back.  
And still, Naruto sat quietly, unmoving, legs still and skinny under the thin blue blanket. Naruto didn't have an answer. Inside the endless mobius strip of his mind, twined inside little cogs in his brain, Naruto was still, quiet, unthinking, unmoving, barely breathing.  
Because Naruto suddenly felt that he was the only one that had any faith in Sasuke.  
And in that moment, he knew that Team 7 would never be together in Konoha again; That there wasn't a world in which his small, imperfect family could live, no place where they could call home, no place where he could hold them together by virtue of his will, or the strength in his hands and back.  
He closed his eyes, nails digging into his knees, and he wanted to rip them away, to destroy something, until his hands were torn apart and laying in pieces.  
But still, Naruto opened his eyes again.  
Because that's what separated him from everyone else. No matter what, Naruto would always try. Because it was all he had to give. 


End file.
